The feedback is even more positive than I was expecting. A lot of times, fans overrate the impact of the result of a game on a prospect's experience, rather than focusing on the important things (actual in-game atmosphere and relationships with the coaches, players, and other prospects), but a pretty demoralizing loss is going to tend to dampen the positive feelings nonetheless.
That doesn't appear to be the case from yesterday's loss to Notre Dame.
Even though the atmosphere started to wane in the second half when the game began to get away from the Hokies, the initial responses I've received from prospects indicate it still managed to be one of the most hype games they've been to. That's a good thing, since you want to get whatever positives you can from a recruiting perspective, even when the game is a loss. The positive feedback has even come from a couple recruits who you could describe as skeptical about VT coming into the game, which is great.
Of course, one of the biggest benefits in recruiting comes from being a good team on the field: players want to play with other great players, and they want to win games. Yesterday was a strong negative in that regard. The coaches didn't really sell playing time to prospects with the "we need you, because we're not good enough yet" angle (in part because most prospects only got to briefly talk to them after the game, if they had a postgame conversation at all), which would have made sense given the situation. Still, the priority has to be winning out the rest of the year to really become an attractive destination for the best players around the country.
I think the Hokies will rebound just like they did following the ODU embarrassment, but keeping the momentum going this time becomes all the more important - margin for error has been eliminated.
